We’ve got the Body & Soul Festival stage times, the playlist and how here are the recommendation for 12 acts to see in Ballinlough this year featuring 9 acts & 3 DJs you must see.

Friday

1.

Anna Meredith

Friday, Main Stage, 10pm

I have zero idea what the live show from Scottish composer Anna Meredith will be like as she’s made music that had an epic brass quality and experimental post-rock-style music but if either of those show up as the sun sets on Ballinlough, particularly the bombastic ‘Nautilus’ then I’d be happy.

2.

Le Boom

Friday, Woodlands, 3am

A late-night show from one of the best new bands in Ireland? Nice. Christy Leech & Aimie Mallon are a party band who make music that moves between house, pop and electro. They are one of the hottest tickets on Irish festivals this summer so stay up late for this one.

3.

The Bug ft. Miss Red

Friday, Midnight Circus, 21:30

If it’s heavy bass and atmosphere with a gritty rhythmic shake informed by down and dirty Drum ‘n’ bass, ragga, grime, ambient and dub, then a live show from the Bug is a must.

Saturday

4.

Bonobo

Saturday 11:15pm, Main stage

Simon Greene’s most recent Bonobo album traded off his reputation as a creator of intricate electronica to add some toughness and dynamic dancefloor production to his music, making Migration his best work yet. Live, he’s already known for large band recreations of that music so this should be a treat.

5.

ELLLL (Live)

Saturday, Reckless In Love, 1am

Corkwoman Ellen King’s electronic is fairly uncompromising sonically, eschewing clean lines and grids for grit and lo-fi noise. Beneath it all, is a throbbing techno style. As seen in the recent Women In electronica documentary, King is also founder of the Gash Collective, who are also playing throughout the weekend.

6.

BARQ

Saturday, 1am Bulmers Lounge, Sunday Woodland stage 11:15pm

BARQ are seasoned musicians having played with Hozier, Kodaline, Monster Monster, Damien Dempsey, Loah, Lethal Dialect, Ryan Sheridan and Zaska in the past and are establishing their own rap-tinged soulful R&B jazz sound under a genre they’ve coined as “agrosoul.”

DJ

Sally Cinnamon

Saturday, Wonderlust, 11.15pm

Saturday is a great day for Irish DJs. While it would be remiss of me as one-third of Lumo CLub not to mention that we are playing twice on Saturday at Reckless in love from 4pm – 6pm and Absolut Bar late at 2am til close. So before you come over the latter, you can find my Loose Joints co-host Sally Cinnamon playing at the Wonderlust stage where I know there’s going to be be tunes I can recommend. Sally introduced me (and many others) to this track and it often gets a play in her sets.

Sunday

7.

Hundred Waters

Sunday, Main Stage, 9pm

One of my favourite live bands. The Florida band Hundred Waters‘ music features skittering electronic leaps, abstract folk textures and the undeniably beautiful voice of Nicole Miglis.

8.

Kelsey Lu

Sunday, Main Stage, 15:30 / Woodlands, 22:30

Kelsey Lu is a North Carolinian cellist and singer/songwriter who makes orchestrally-arranged ambient folk music and has an EP out on True Panther. She has earned comparisons to Alice Coltrane and Bat For Lashes, Lu’s music leans into the avant-garde spectrum yet she has collaborated with artists in the field of pop and R&B like Blood Orange, Kelela and Wet.

9.

Ships

Sunday, Woodlands 1am

They are the creators of an album that is one of my favourites of the year, an ’80s-inspired collection of strutting synth disco with heart. Simon Cullen and Sorca MCGrath will work better than most at 1am at a festival. The place to be.

DJs

Mix & Fairbanks

Sunday, Absolut Bar, 3pm

DJ Arveene has curated a whole weekend of DJs with an emphasis on the Irish selectors and the lineup is strong across the weekend with the likes of Ciara Brady, Kelly-Anne Byrne, Billy Scurry, Jimmy Rouge, Eddie Kay, Stevie G, Cyril Briscoe, DJ Deece and Aoife Nic Canna among them. Kildare up and comers Gary O’Reilly and Rob Smyth aka Mix & Fairbanks have recently got into original tracks to whopping effect, but it’s the skills as DJs playing disco and house edits and classics that started them on their path. Just listen to the Linndrum (80s drum machine) inspired mix they made for me last year.

Bonus

Sunday, Woodlands Stage. 6:45pm

Ok so slightly cheating here, but my wife Aoife runs Sing Along Social and last year’s Body&Soul was the first time her zero commitment choir debuted at a festival and it went off as you can see below. Basically, Sing Along Social is a zero-commitment choir, a group karaoke session, a party with lyrics and backing tracks. This year’s theme is Pop Battle so think Drake vs. Rihanna, Justin vs Britney, Abba vs. Fleetwood Mac and more, including props and inflatable. It’ll be gas. There’s a kids version on the Saturday too.

Theatrical performances: Waterford playwright Conor Clancy’s ‘Will It Fit In A Van?’ about a poorly run drug distribution in a small fictional town delves into kidnappings, murder, biscuits, beloved horses, the clergy and a very important chipper!; while ‘Fizzy Drinks with Two Straws’, a play for anyone who has ever been told “you’re too young to understand”, comes to Body&Soul from Scene & Heard Festival and Theatre Upstairs.

Wonderlust’s line-up of live music, performance, conversations, talks and workshops in the walled garden will include Katie Kim and Crash Ensemble, while Women on Walls brings its movement to Ballinlough where Accenture’s Eithne Harley, Royal Irish Academy’s Pauric Dempsey and TCD’s Professor Lydia Lynch will discuss how underrepresentation of women in the RIA’s official portraits led them to take positive action and commission several female portraits now on permanent display at Academy House.

new to this year: The Library of Progress is a positive subversion of The Library of Congress, the United States’ repository of some of humanity’s greatest works and the largest library in the world. Highlights include Beats and Rhymes with Emmet Kirwan, a blitz of spoken word and hip hop performances and FACTION, hard-hitting political debate with Blindboy BoatClub of Rubberbandits.

1.

Bonobo – Migration

My album of the week. Bonobo’s sixth album is nomadic & intimate, open-minded and expansive drawing on his ambient chill trademark and tougher almost clubbier sounds with guest vocals from Hundred Waters, Nick Murphy, Rhye and Morrocco’s Innov Gnawa.

2.

Austra – Future Politics

Katie Stelmanis’ third album as Austra feels looser than her previous work, and despite the title, more human. The operatic synth-pop is still very much there and the politics of the title feels rooted in the personal.

4.

SOHN – Rennen

Since the release of his 2014 debut, SOHN has moved continents, got married and is this week, expecting his first child. In the same time he’s also managed to hugely improve his songcraft which to this point always worked best writing for others. Rennen is an album of alt-synth singer-songwriter music with touches of spacious R&B and orchestral atmospherics.

5.

Loyle Carner – Yesterday’s Gone

Upcoming London rapper with a relaxed vocal style, Carner’s debut album dropped today and his Uber driver is a fan. This is a lyrical-focused largely drawing on laidback jazz and hip-hop beats. Carner plays The Workman’s Club on February 2nd.

6.

The latest release on Awesome Tapes From Africa features singer Awa Poulo of Peulh origin from Dilly commune in Mali on the border of Mauritania features eight new tracks of folk-pop of the region with Poulo singing atop loose guitar, flute, n’goni (lute), calabash gourd hand percussion.

Migration, the sixth album from Simon Green AKA Bonobo reaches new heights in his already distinguished discography by being his best record yet.

Building on 2013’s The North Borders and live shows which saw a cast of 12 musicians bringing his downbeat and ambient electronica to life, Migration manages to conjur up a nomadic sense of intimacy across its hour running time.

The ambient textures that could have lead Bonobo’s music to be called “chill” are refined here, expanded and richer, more detailed and human. Guest vocalists Rhye on ‘Break Apart’ and Hundred Waters’ Nicole Miglis on ‘Surface’ see to that, while Moroccan band Innov Gnawa bring that globe-trotting sensibility.

There are big signs of growth. ‘Outlier’ which sprawls out as a warm percussive upbeat jazz/house song in the vein of Floating Points grows tougher with a Four Tet-style beat. Innov Gnawa-featuring ‘Bambro Koyo Ganda’ could well drift off into pleasing worldly ambience but its rhythm and spark doesn’t let it settle. ‘Kerala’, which samples Brandy is soulful and warped in an urgent way while Nick Murphy (Chet Faker) adds to the expanse on ‘No Reason’. ‘Grains’ seemingly channels the vocal twists of James Blake in its construction.

Green says that the album is inspired by “the relationship between transience and identity,” and the album wisely doesn’t sit still for long. Ambient electronic and chilled music can often feel insular, a safe place to crawl to in your mind. Migration benefits from bringing in life from the outside.

1.

Syd – ‘All About Me’

The Internet’s Syd announced an upcoming solo album Fin, February 3rd on Columbia, which dropped with ‘All About Me’, a song about keeping your friends close set to an aquatic R&B beat and those Hud Mo-style heaves.

2.

The xx – ‘Brave For You’

The xx’s third album I See You dropped today (review here), an album in which they embrace expansion & sing outward with growth and confidence. ‘Brave For You’ is a song sung only by Romy Madly Croft, dedicated to her recently-deceased parents. It’s a moving song which she sings “And when I’m scared / I imagine you’re there / Telling me to be brave / So I will be brave for you / stand on a stage for you”, while Jamie Smith supports the sentiment with subtle production that grows in strength over its running time.

3.

Blanck Mass – ‘Please’

One of half of Fuck Buttons, Benjamin John Power returns with a third Blanck Mass album and it’s trailed with the heady clattering electronic jam ‘Please.’ which bares its teeth. World Eater< is out in March on Sacred Bones.

4.

Bonobo – ‘No Reason’ feat. Nick Murphy

Migration, the new album from Bonobo dropped today and appears to be a return to form with standout tracks from Hundred Waters’ Nicole Miglis, Moroccan band Innov Gnawa, Rhye and this expansive house-leaning collaboration with Nick Murphy (formerly Chet Faker).

5.

Sampha – (No one Knows Me) Like The Piano

‘(No One Knows Me) Like The Piano’ is a new song from Sampha written in tribute to his mother Binty Sisay and the piano that she owned. It was in her house from the age of three and was used in much of his upcoming album Process on Young Turks on February 3rd. Sampha says of his mother – “The more time that passes, the more I see the extent of her love for me.”

6.

Mr Tophat feat. Robyn – ‘Trust Me’

More of a collage-style dancefloor groover than an out and out collaboration, ‘Trust Me’ feels like a respite in a mix, a build towards a crescendo. Not only does Robyn provide vocals to this warm disco analogue-style production, it also features Abba drummer Per Lindvall and his brother David on bass. Lineage.

7.

Laura Marling – ‘Wild Fire’

Laura Marling is set to release her sixth studio album Semper Femina on March 10th on her own Alarming Records in conjunction with Kobalt Music.

‘Wild Fire’ is our second taster of the album, and like her Reversal of the Music podcast which featured Dolly Parton, Emmylou Harris, Haim and Shura among others), it is imbued with the exploration of femininity and the idea of a muse, in Marling’s recently adopted spoken-folk lilt.

“She keeps a pen behind her ear / in case she’s got a thing she really really wants to say / she puts it in a notepad / she’s going to write a book someday / of course the only time I want to read / is about her time spent with me / wouldn’t you die to know how you’re seen / are you getting away with who you’re trying to be?”

8.

Sinkane – ‘Telephone’

Sinkane follows up his ‘U’huh’ return single with another Afro-funk pop single about a booty call from someone odious essentially. The video, directed by Bráulio Amado & Bruno Ferreira was filmed in a single-shot in an apartment in Lisbon, Portugal and stars Kelly Nakamura, a classically-trained ballerina and dance instructor

1.

DJ Seinfeld – ‘U’

Lo-fi house it may have been dubbed due to its pisstakey name and peers (Ross From Friends, DJ Boring) but backlash aside, DJ Seinfeld’s music is proven to have a big heart as well as a sense of humour. ‘U’ is warm and emotive and even manages to turn a Bob Geldof sample into something sweet.

2.

Bonobo feat. Rhye – ‘Break Apart’

Rhye, the music of Mike Milosh and Robin Hannibal has an elegant quality to it. When paired with Simon Green’s lush soundscapes as Bonobo, it’s a fruitful match. The song is from the forthcoming album Migration which will also feature Nick Murphy (FKA Chet Faker), Nicole Miglis of Hundred Waters and Moroccan band Innov Gnawa. You may have heard previous song ‘Kerala’ and it’s Gemma-Arterton-starring video.

3.

All The People – ‘Beach Club’

Smooth soulful indie atmosphere from All The People, who are three brothers Ashley, Simon and Curtis from the UK.

‘It’s reminiscent of memories of our childhood summers spent in caravan parks on the south coast where the actual beach club we refer to still stands. It actually started life as pure house track and then we played around with harmonies & took inspiration lyrically from ‘The Prophet’ by Kahlil Gabrain shaping it into a slightly melancholy, nostalgic song’

A debut album called R Together is to be released in March.

4.

St. Francis Hotel — ‘You’d Gotta Be Alive’

St. Francis Hotel are a new Irish act/producers based in London who have released three songs thus far but have done enough to be noticed by the wider world via KCRW, The Line of Best Fit, Clash, BBC Six Music and Spotify.

They previously featured here as producers of the song ‘Writer’s Block’ with Lixo and Trim but their own music is much more band-based, psychedelic rock, synth atmosphere with pop tones, as heard on debut ‘Mondello’ and its reprise of sorts ‘Beyond Mondello’ below.

The duo (names unknown) met in London after emigrating to Dublin during the recession.

Newest song ‘You’d Gotta Be Alive’ is the best of the three: a soulful psychedelic groove with falsetto and laid-back atmospheric vibes.

5.

Ta’East – ‘Withtheshit’

Over two years since the rapper Ta’East first featured on Nialler9, the San Diego rapper finally dropped his music acknowledging the wait with the title “>OK, I’m Ready, which features his first handful of tracks including this individual track.

6.

Kemt – ‘100 Reasons’

A smooth lo-fi-leaning house jam from a Parisian producer that autoplayed on Soundcloud for me earlier this week. Sound! Buy the track.

7.

Formation – ‘Powerful People’ (Krystal Klear Remix)

Dec Krystal Klear adds some synth-disco propulsion to Formation’s new single ‘Powerful People’. No official release yet.

1.

Daithí – ‘Falling For You’ feat. Sinead White

It proved a fruitful partnership so the pair are at it again on the lead song from Daithí’s forthcoming EP Holiday Home, due in March. Holiday Home came about when Daithí bought a field recorded and began recording the sounds of the west of Ireland in an attempt to build a unique library of sounds.

‘Falling For You’, his collaboration with White, uses sea sounds from Inch beach in Cork and bell sounds from a wind chime I found in an Air Bnb in Achill. White recorded the vocals on Valentia Island.

Watch the video, also suitably set in the West of Ireland by Feel Good Lost.

2.

Toofools – ‘Touch’

In a short time, TooFools, a band brought to us by Lorcan O’Dwyer, Steven McCann and their big gang of friends have made a splash on the Dublin music landscape.

They introduced themselves with a live video by Christian Tierney of Insanity.

Now, nearly a year later and with much live experience under their belts, ‘Touch’ is an indication of what comes next – a disco-funking electronic soul stomper that recalls Jungle in its backdrop and falsetto.

3.

Saint Sister – ‘Tin Man’

The atmosfolk duo Saint Sister, Morgan MacIntyre and Gemma Doherty have established themselves as one of the best new Irish bands of the last year and a bit.

The pair have now released two new songs to keep us sated. ‘Tin Man’ and ‘Corpses’ are two songs recorded with Alex Ryan which are released through Communion Music’s Singles Club.

Communion have a habit of illuminating breaking folk artists and these two songs by the band, while they very much fit their harmony-folk aesthetic, there’s more atmosphere at play in the arrangements than before.

5.

DJ Shadow – ‘Building Steam With A Grain Of Salt’ (Salva remix)

DJ Shadow touched down in Dublin on Thursday for a rare live set at Metropolis. A producer with such a revered first album often struggles to stay modern in what follows (Shadow addresses that weight here). Luckily, his latest album The Mountain Shall Fall has some peaks on it (most notably Run The Jewels) but it’s a recent remix album of Entroducing featuring remixes by contemporaries like Hudson Mohawke, Teklife, Lee Bannon, Prince Paul and Clams Casino that attempts a reimagining of the seminal first album. Most successful of the lot is Salva’s footwork remix of ‘Building Steam With A Grain Of Salt’, which Shadow incorporated into his set at Metropolis.

The Nialler9 TXFM show airs every Thursday night at 10pm for two hours. You can listen live on 105.2FM, online, the TXFM app or if you missed it, on the listen back function on the site, as per below. The show starts six minutes in, right after the news in each hour. Click the buttons to launch the TXFM site autoplaying links.

The Nialler9 TXFM show airs every Thursday night at 10pm for two hours. You can listen on 105.2FM, online, the TXFM app or if you missed it, on the listen back function on the site. Here’s last night’s show, which was all Longitude artists.

Bonobo’s last album 2010’s Black Sands had much to recommend on its tracklisting and ‘Cirrus’ from the new one The North Borders (March 29th/April 1st on Ninja Tune) is a Gold Panda-esque shuffling beat and bell track. Lovely. The video is a twist on the found footage video trope. Get the track as a free download.(more…)